Fear keeps me from giving in to a friend's bet and swallowing a live hamster.
Well, I suggest you don't take the fear cure, then. But it might prove useful to those of us who can identify a bad idea without being afraid of it. You know, with our brains.
Fear is less useful to humans, because they can make rational decisions and evaluate risks, than it is to animals, who cannot. I don't need a fear reaction to tell me that jumping from one high building to another, when I don't know for sure I can make it, is a bad idea.
As someone who is subject to an irrational fear of flying, I would love to selectively and occasionally be free of it. Or are you saying that fear is a useful mechanism to prevent me from boarding a plane?
It's not convoluted at all. The difference isn't whether he thinks these things are wrong or not, but that he thinks that their wrongness, according to his moral code, should be inflicted on others. The comparison to prostitution is entirely apposite, because while he presumably would not wish to be punished by the government for his habit, he does want to use the instruments of government to bludgeon others for violations of a purely moral nature.
It is absolutely hypocritical to advocate the use of the mechanism of government to enforce your Christian morality on others but to engage in violations of that Christian morality.
I don't think anything you can do in a solo game is "cheating." It's your game, you bought it to have fun with. If you want to walk around the world blasting everything in sight with unlimited ammo, invulnerability and a superweapon, why shouldn't you do that? You're not playing to impress someone else, or to satisfy their goals.
I don't like doing that but I have an allergy to repeating tedium. It's not fun for me to get stuck on something for more than three days. I'll gladly look online for secrets or a walkthrough to get me past that point. I think that's probably typical. And yes, I do consider it a weakness of the game if I have to do that too much. In particular I hate boss battles that you can't persist your way through... that require some "secret" strategy to defeat that isn't clear from the circumstances. I also have a pet peeve about games which introduce difficulty in "artificial" ways that aren't related to the play of the game, like limiting save points or requiring you to remember the list of artifacts to get, or how to get to places you've already been to.
I feel the same way about difficulty levels. Pick the right one for you. It's your amusement, do whatever you find most amusing.
Obviously this is entirely different if you're interacting with others in some way, then cheating may in fact come into it. Playing video games solo is mere masturbation, I don't understand why someone else would be interested in how I get enjoyment out of it.
I'd love a Myst-like game for the Wii, and my wife probably would, too. Limited-scope, mini-game style games are okay for a while but it would be nice to have something to sink your teeth into that wasn't a twitch adventure.
Making false statements in your resume is also a fraud, grounds for immediate dismissal and suing for lost time and money.
Well, I'd prefer to find out before I hire them. In any case, the problem is not false statements, it's meaningless statements. "Languages known: Java" is a meaningless statement, not false. Even "IBM Corporation (5 years): Java programmer" is meaningless.
Re:on sidenote: dumb terminals are officially dead
on
Are 80 Columns Enough?
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· Score: 1
Yes, we have a couple in our server room (really more of a closet these days) but I don't really know where I'd get more. It doesn't seem like that long I was ordering a hundred fifty of the things.
For my serial terminals at home I use a terminal emulator.
I have a counterexample more in keeping with the GP's point. This was a very large Python application developed and maintained by maybe a dozen to fifteen programmers. No one could remember how to continue lines, or I guess, never bothered to find out, because the application was marked by lots of fairly long lines (not really long ones, just ones that made it difficult whenever your editor settings or width was different than the original programmer.
The sections that I was writing involved a lot of here-documents, too, and this combination of factors convinced me that Python wasn't the sort of think I liked.
Well, the convention under consideration is source code line length. I find as you do that tabular output is often much better with 132 columns.
Re:type width has nothing to do with technology ..
on
Are 80 Columns Enough?
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· Score: 1
Yes, instead of saying "let's display more characters per line because displays are wider" you might as well say "let's hear it all read out to us instead of viewing it, because computers all have sound now."
What seems like a superficial failing (doesn't fit in the terminal window) exposes what is actually a deep failing: that Java requires you to write a lot of structure, compared to the amount of programmer intent you express. Java is this generation's COBOL, in so many ways, not least because it forces the programmer to spend (waste) time writing scaffolding at the expense of expressing their intent.
Java is popular for the same reasons COBOL was, as well: in the words of Paul Graham, it produces a lot of what looks like work (but isn't), and it's what everyone else is using.
Most amazing to me is that Java programmers almost universally agree with this assessment (the former one, about writing pointless structure instead of expressing intent), but they think the fix is to have a program write some of your structure for you. They don't seem to consider the notion that, hey, buddy, if your programming language requires so much typing you need to have a computer type it for you, then maybe the language isn't serving you well, and the answer is another language, not another Eclipse plug-in. It's been shown again and again that in programming languages the fewer characters used to express a concept, the better, but for some reason people don't listen.
It's interesting that a discussion about something apparently superficial (line length) actually touches quite deeply on the matter of programming.
No, using tabs in this way is awful. Conway provides a great indictment of it in Perl Best Practices, but the upshot is "just set the tabstop to 2" isn't something you can actually do.
If you are in an interviewing situation, it is already known that you are competent from a technical viewpoint so we don't need to hear about any cool monitoring software you'd like to install.
This is hardly universal. There's no way a job candidate can demonstrate to me their technical competence without a thorough technical interview. The only exception would be someone whom I already had worked with before. Resumes are worthless for this; certifications even more so, though at least they offer some entertainment value.
Don't say you will read./ or any other news, because that would imply you will waste time at work doing something you really should be doing at home.
Personally I would give full points to an answer like:
Coffee - Check for any pressing emergencies - Socialize a little with coworkers for any work related things you need to know.
Such questions are primarily about seeing how you answer questions, not primarily about your morning routine. I want to hear your immediate answer to the question, not some mealy-mouthed creation of what you think I want to hear (the answer you gave, unlike the truth, requires a few seconds of thought. Do you really think I expect you to require a few moments to compose your answer to "What do you do every morning of your life? Please). Do you answer questions that are put to you or do you try to manipulate people with your answers? Politic bullshitting like the answer you described (not too honest) will drop you from consideration. If you do it too much, I'll end the interview and send you home for wasting my time--yes, I have done this.
And what happens the day you do get the job, and you are now starting every day under the eye of your boss? You're going to swear off slashdot and your blogs? No, instead you'll be exposed as a liar. Great advice, there.
The thing is, Wikipedia is not a good example of general written English. It would probably have a lower entropy than a random sample of prose.
Wikipedia article text contains a great deal of repetitive structured syntax associated with formatting, document structure, article classification, etc. In addition to this literal structure, its prose is highly stereotyped due to the pedagogical nature of encyclopedia writing, and to the fairly tight conventions around Wikipedia article-writing itself. The vast majority of article first lines could be generated from a table of meta-data, for example ("'''$name''' ($birthdate - $deathdate) is a '''$nationality''' '''$profession'''..."). Many sorts of sentences and paragraphs never appear in Wikipedia, as they might in a random sample of writing. Many whole articles are essentially the same as every other article in a series, with the small exceptions of things like the name and date of introduction.
It seems like neither you nor the parent poster is considering the fact (or did not mention it--but I think it's worth mentioning) that book censorship, banning, outrage, and restricting access by minors to some books has a long history predating these other media, both in the United States and other countries; and continuing to the present day.
They're not "going to come after our books" if they follow their logic; they've been coming after our books for centuries. Free speech is something that wants defending in any media, at any time, and upon the same principles and with the same kind of restrictions.
...wouldn't the best game be NOT the one that requires hundreds and hundreds of dollars to be spent, but rather something that can be played on the most platforms, is available for free, had a major effect on culture, has been around the longest, has been a basis for whole genres of game design, etc.
Respectively, no, no, no, no and no.
The original article is about identifying the best game. While this is still a highly subjective measure, it has nothing to do with most ported, most free, most influential to popular culture, oldest or most influential to other games.
No one plays Pong anymore, except for the thrill of nostalgia. No one plays Breakout. Hell, even the Breakout derivative on my phone is better than the original Breakout. There are a very few older games that we know are very good because people still play them (them, not some derivative which is better). Super Mario Bros. is one. Nethack is another. There are probably a few others, but not many. Too many will have been followed by sequels and derivatives that improved on that type of game.
If you were making a list of "most important" games some of your criteria might apply. "Most classic," "most played," etc. all might incorporate some of it. But a "best game" should be judged only on the quality of the game itself. Donkey Kong is just not that great compared to almost any of what we might consider a "real platformer" now. Was it fun back in the day? Of course! But that doesn't make it the "best" now, any more than it makes Roger Bannister the fastest runner.
I think what's meant by RPG in the "video game genre" sense is that it's a game where you have the equivalent of a character sheet--that is, the characters get better by defeating foes over time. It's not meant in the literal sense of playing a role.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, they could have required you to release it under a free license that allows them to use it (and you and anyone else, too).
Well, I suggest you don't take the fear cure, then. But it might prove useful to those of us who can identify a bad idea without being afraid of it. You know, with our brains.
Fear is less useful to humans, because they can make rational decisions and evaluate risks, than it is to animals, who cannot. I don't need a fear reaction to tell me that jumping from one high building to another, when I don't know for sure I can make it, is a bad idea.
As someone who is subject to an irrational fear of flying, I would love to selectively and occasionally be free of it. Or are you saying that fear is a useful mechanism to prevent me from boarding a plane?
It's not convoluted at all. The difference isn't whether he thinks these things are wrong or not, but that he thinks that their wrongness, according to his moral code, should be inflicted on others. The comparison to prostitution is entirely apposite, because while he presumably would not wish to be punished by the government for his habit, he does want to use the instruments of government to bludgeon others for violations of a purely moral nature.
It is absolutely hypocritical to advocate the use of the mechanism of government to enforce your Christian morality on others but to engage in violations of that Christian morality.
I don't think anything you can do in a solo game is "cheating." It's your game, you bought it to have fun with. If you want to walk around the world blasting everything in sight with unlimited ammo, invulnerability and a superweapon, why shouldn't you do that? You're not playing to impress someone else, or to satisfy their goals.
I don't like doing that but I have an allergy to repeating tedium. It's not fun for me to get stuck on something for more than three days. I'll gladly look online for secrets or a walkthrough to get me past that point. I think that's probably typical. And yes, I do consider it a weakness of the game if I have to do that too much. In particular I hate boss battles that you can't persist your way through... that require some "secret" strategy to defeat that isn't clear from the circumstances. I also have a pet peeve about games which introduce difficulty in "artificial" ways that aren't related to the play of the game, like limiting save points or requiring you to remember the list of artifacts to get, or how to get to places you've already been to.
I feel the same way about difficulty levels. Pick the right one for you. It's your amusement, do whatever you find most amusing.
Obviously this is entirely different if you're interacting with others in some way, then cheating may in fact come into it. Playing video games solo is mere masturbation, I don't understand why someone else would be interested in how I get enjoyment out of it.
I'd love a Myst-like game for the Wii, and my wife probably would, too. Limited-scope, mini-game style games are okay for a while but it would be nice to have something to sink your teeth into that wasn't a twitch adventure.
Well, I'd prefer to find out before I hire them. In any case, the problem is not false statements, it's meaningless statements. "Languages known: Java" is a meaningless statement, not false. Even "IBM Corporation (5 years): Java programmer" is meaningless.
Yes, we have a couple in our server room (really more of a closet these days) but I don't really know where I'd get more. It doesn't seem like that long I was ordering a hundred fifty of the things.
For my serial terminals at home I use a terminal emulator.
I have a counterexample more in keeping with the GP's point. This was a very large Python application developed and maintained by maybe a dozen to fifteen programmers. No one could remember how to continue lines, or I guess, never bothered to find out, because the application was marked by lots of fairly long lines (not really long ones, just ones that made it difficult whenever your editor settings or width was different than the original programmer.
The sections that I was writing involved a lot of here-documents, too, and this combination of factors convinced me that Python wasn't the sort of think I liked.
Well, the convention under consideration is source code line length. I find as you do that tabular output is often much better with 132 columns.
Yes, instead of saying "let's display more characters per line because displays are wider" you might as well say "let's hear it all read out to us instead of viewing it, because computers all have sound now."
Why would power of two matter for indentation?
What seems like a superficial failing (doesn't fit in the terminal window) exposes what is actually a deep failing: that Java requires you to write a lot of structure, compared to the amount of programmer intent you express. Java is this generation's COBOL, in so many ways, not least because it forces the programmer to spend (waste) time writing scaffolding at the expense of expressing their intent.
Java is popular for the same reasons COBOL was, as well: in the words of Paul Graham, it produces a lot of what looks like work (but isn't), and it's what everyone else is using.
Most amazing to me is that Java programmers almost universally agree with this assessment (the former one, about writing pointless structure instead of expressing intent), but they think the fix is to have a program write some of your structure for you. They don't seem to consider the notion that, hey, buddy, if your programming language requires so much typing you need to have a computer type it for you, then maybe the language isn't serving you well, and the answer is another language, not another Eclipse plug-in. It's been shown again and again that in programming languages the fewer characters used to express a concept, the better, but for some reason people don't listen.
It's interesting that a discussion about something apparently superficial (line length) actually touches quite deeply on the matter of programming.
Maybe just a simple list of the program structures, without all the representational syntax getting in the way?
Like every Java programmer I've ever met, you rather egregiously miss the point.
No, using tabs in this way is awful. Conway provides a great indictment of it in Perl Best Practices, but the upshot is "just set the tabstop to 2" isn't something you can actually do.
Wow, I really can't stand bosses like you, I'm glad I don't have one that feels the need to pry into my private life or tell me what to do every day.
This is hardly universal. There's no way a job candidate can demonstrate to me their technical competence without a thorough technical interview. The only exception would be someone whom I already had worked with before. Resumes are worthless for this; certifications even more so, though at least they offer some entertainment value.
Such questions are primarily about seeing how you answer questions, not primarily about your morning routine. I want to hear your immediate answer to the question, not some mealy-mouthed creation of what you think I want to hear (the answer you gave, unlike the truth, requires a few seconds of thought. Do you really think I expect you to require a few moments to compose your answer to "What do you do every morning of your life? Please). Do you answer questions that are put to you or do you try to manipulate people with your answers? Politic bullshitting like the answer you described (not too honest) will drop you from consideration. If you do it too much, I'll end the interview and send you home for wasting my time--yes, I have done this.
And what happens the day you do get the job, and you are now starting every day under the eye of your boss? You're going to swear off slashdot and your blogs? No, instead you'll be exposed as a liar. Great advice, there.
The thing is, Wikipedia is not a good example of general written English. It would probably have a lower entropy than a random sample of prose.
Wikipedia article text contains a great deal of repetitive structured syntax associated with formatting, document structure, article classification, etc. In addition to this literal structure, its prose is highly stereotyped due to the pedagogical nature of encyclopedia writing, and to the fairly tight conventions around Wikipedia article-writing itself. The vast majority of article first lines could be generated from a table of meta-data, for example ("'''$name''' ($birthdate - $deathdate) is a '''$nationality''' '''$profession'''..."). Many sorts of sentences and paragraphs never appear in Wikipedia, as they might in a random sample of writing. Many whole articles are essentially the same as every other article in a series, with the small exceptions of things like the name and date of introduction.
One day a couple weeks ago, I decided it might be fun to get a Wii. I walked into my local department store and bought one off the shelf. No biggie.
It seems like neither you nor the parent poster is considering the fact (or did not mention it--but I think it's worth mentioning) that book censorship, banning, outrage, and restricting access by minors to some books has a long history predating these other media, both in the United States and other countries; and continuing to the present day.
They're not "going to come after our books" if they follow their logic; they've been coming after our books for centuries. Free speech is something that wants defending in any media, at any time, and upon the same principles and with the same kind of restrictions.
If it was done in one day by a malnourished monkey, does that make the game itself any better?
No, it's Ween.
Respectively, no, no, no, no and no.
The original article is about identifying the best game. While this is still a highly subjective measure, it has nothing to do with most ported, most free, most influential to popular culture, oldest or most influential to other games.
No one plays Pong anymore, except for the thrill of nostalgia. No one plays Breakout. Hell, even the Breakout derivative on my phone is better than the original Breakout. There are a very few older games that we know are very good because people still play them (them, not some derivative which is better). Super Mario Bros. is one. Nethack is another. There are probably a few others, but not many. Too many will have been followed by sequels and derivatives that improved on that type of game.
If you were making a list of "most important" games some of your criteria might apply. "Most classic," "most played," etc. all might incorporate some of it. But a "best game" should be judged only on the quality of the game itself. Donkey Kong is just not that great compared to almost any of what we might consider a "real platformer" now. Was it fun back in the day? Of course! But that doesn't make it the "best" now, any more than it makes Roger Bannister the fastest runner.
I think what's meant by RPG in the "video game genre" sense is that it's a game where you have the equivalent of a character sheet--that is, the characters get better by defeating foes over time. It's not meant in the literal sense of playing a role.